According to the prior art, support grids are used as the supporting or carrying elements for beds. The grids e.g., comprise laths, which are fixed in resilient or stiff manner to a bed frame or to longitudinal beams or bars of such a frame or are resiliently mounted and the bed is transversely covered in the prestressed or relieved state. Normally on the lath grid is placed a mattress and the lath grid and mattress together form the carrying and springy support on which a person can comfortably sit or lie. The lath grid assumes the carrying function and the mattress the elastic function adapting to a body contour. The lath grid must have a minimum mechanical strength, but is advantageously and simultaneously resilient to a limited extent.
The demands made on the elastic qualities of the support grid increase if the mattress becomes thinner. For reasons of hygiene, handling, orthopedics and particular elastic qualities of mattresses there is a need for creating ever thinner mattresses, i.e., the elastic and adaptation function is transferred in an ever increasing extent to the support grid. For the same carrying or bearing capacity a lath grid can be given a more resilient and adaptable form, if e.g., a larger number of finer laths are used, but this makes the lath grid much more expensive. A design of the fastenings between the frame and the laths in the form of a bearing permitting a vertical movement of the laths and also a limited pivoting movement of the laths about their own longitudinal axis fulfil the same function. However, fastenings which are constructed e.g., in the form of complicated, articulated rubber devices are expensive.
Despite very stiff laths and very simple lath fastenings lath grids, whose laths, which are firmly fixed to at least two spring bodies parallel to the bed longitudinal axis, e.g., beam-like bodies made from an elastic material such as latex, have very good springy characteristics. The spring bodies then rest on the longitudinal beams of a bed frame or can also be placed directly on the floor. When the grid is loaded spring bodies enable the laths to perform movements in the vertical direction, together with limited pivoting movements about their longitudinal axes. Lath grids based on this principle are e.g., commercially available under the trade names "Liforma" and "Marmotli" and have very good elastic and adaptation properties, so that they can be comfortably used with very thin mattresses.
However, even with these grids, it is found that narrower laths lead to greater comfort than wider laths, i.e., with a minimum of costs a higher, but more restricted comfort is attainable and that said comfort could be further improved with narrower laths.